


That Floaty Feeling

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Spideychelle: The Midtown Years [25]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: (Or is it?), Coffee Shops, Denial, Drunk Peter Parker, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Flirting, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, House Party, Michelle Jones to the rescue, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25881922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: How long has Michelle been the kind of girl who stays long after the party's over? About as long as Peter's been the kind of guy who passes out drunk on a pool float.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, background Betty Brant/Ned Leeds
Series: Spideychelle: The Midtown Years [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808812
Comments: 88
Kudos: 193





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's prompt (from Tumblr): 15. Drunkenly confessing feelings

Michelle doesn’t go home because there’s nothing interesting to go home to. Griping parents, or maybe sleeping parents, and the inevitability of there being nothing good on TV, everything determinedly uncompelling enough to counter the secret pleasure she gets from sitting on the floor in the dark, too close to the screen with the volume on low. She’s fifteen. She’s ready for her simple pleasures to be a little less simple.

Anyway, it’s nice here now. She sits on the kitchen counter, both knees up and legs crossed at the ankles, to feel the air coming through the window screen. It’s not quite cool, but it’s a breeze and therefore better than the sticky stillness of the large house. Why does anyone like the weather in mid-August?

When Michelle slides reluctantly off the edge to stand on the tile floor, her movement rattles plastic bottles and tin cans, sloshes water from a forgotten ice tray―the tools of mixed drinks concocted by an amateur hand. Or dozens of them. Every teenage boy becomes a bartender at a house party, by his own estimation. That’s why she’s getting up. It may _seem_ quiet enough from her perch in the kitchen, but drinks made too strong have their predictable effects and there are some people at this party that she cares about. So what if she’s never exactly mentioned it? Michelle figures the words will come in their own time, like the vomiting that will come to anyone who drank some of the combos she identifies based on which bottles are clustered together on the countertop and kitchen table.

She wanders.

Ned and Betty are on the couch in the living room, staring at each other shyly and sleepily like they forget that they were making out hard the last time Michelle passed through. Flash is sitting against a wall by his DJing stuff, rhythmically (and irritatingly) clunking the side of a plastic cup in and out. He attempts to draw her into an argument that she can barely decipher with his slurring and more changes in dynamic than he uses with music, so she ignores him. The person Michelle doesn’t find is Liz, who is presumably upstairs. She could be drunkenly reapplying and overexaggerating her makeup in the bathroom, going van Gogh-swirly on the eyes and Picasso-pointy on the lips; or weeping over an unrequited crush in her bedroom while her best friends hold her hands, petting her shoulders and the tops of her feet; or even banging some guy in the spare room just because they’re both young and alive and not immune to the rituals of summer’s-almost-over high school parties. Michelle has no problem with any of her decathlon captain’s theoretical choices. As long as the guy with Liz is not the same guy Michelle has not yet admitted she’s looking for. Even coming close to acknowledging her feelings makes her too warm, the back of her neck clammy, so she darts quietly through Liz’s parents’ house, re-entering and exiting the empty kitchen, pushing out the heavy back door.

Her sudden breathy snort is disbelief. She’s found him. Peter’s in the pool.

Specifically, he’s lying on an inflatable lounger, drifting on top of the water, which is great news because it looks like he’s asleep and if he wasn’t riding this lime-green floaty he probably would’ve drowned. He still could. The idiot might roll over and flop right into the deep end. The floaty could be defective and slowly deflate beneath him. Michelle doesn’t _want_ to rescue Peter Parker, but she’s _here_ and she _could_. Calling Ned to deal with his friend himself or just throwing empty cans at Peter until he wakes up don’t occur to her. Instead, Michelle glances around the backyard, dark but for the wavering shine from lights along the walls of the pool below the surface. Aha, pool shed. She approaches.

It’s really more of a pool gazebo, practically a pool guest house, as she swings the door open and tries to judge the size of the space in the dark. Luckily, she doesn’t need to venture far; the tool for the job at hand is cradled in a pair of hooks mounted to the wall just inside. Michelle emerges with the pole of a blue leaf skimmer gripped in her hand and returns to the pool’s edge. Where she hesitates.

Peter shifts in his sleep. She’s hardly seen him since school let out a month and a half ago. Is he taller? Unlikely. She doesn’t mean to be _watching_ him, but when she realizes she is, she takes a swift look over her shoulder. Nobody staring out the back door, no curious faces in the windows. There’s honestly nothing to see. At most, someone might think she’s come out here to murder Peter with a leaf skimmer, which everyone would probably accept as so on-brand for the sarcastic asocial girl (who only really lights up when she overhears words like ‘unsolved,’ ‘conspiracy,’ and ‘cereal’―homophones are the source of many of her day-to-day disappointments) that her quietly simmering crush would remain unnoticed. When his chest rises and falls peacefully, Michelle starts to lean forward. PANIC. She plants the end of the skimmer in a gap between the large patio stones to prevent herself from toppling into the pool. This will _not_ turn into a situation where she’s the one who needs to be saved. She sighs and accepts that she better reel this dork (crush? Who said crush?) in.

Balance regained and heart rate returning to normal, Michelle takes hold of the skimmer’s net and reaches across the water with the handle. It takes some adjusting, some extending and angling, but she gets the end of the pole in the floaty’s cupholder. She breathes deeply, always watching Peter’s face, as she tows him along the surface of the water, walking at the pool’s edge to the shallow end. A soft swish, the bright noises of bugs at night. Then, the inflatable chair is bumping the wide steps and Peter stirs. _No, shhh_ , Michelle thinks, _go back to sleep_. But that’s ridiculous. He has to be awake for her to get him out of the pool. If he doesn’t get out of the pool, her rescue is incomplete. He has to get out, say an awkward thanks, and stroll into the house to find Ned. Or Liz. Oh, Michelle’s aware of the way Liz has been warming to Peter. She likes Liz a lot―at the same time, she wants to stand between the two of them like the Great Wall of China. That’s a normal thing to feel, right?

Peter seems groggy from sleep, but Michelle’s voice shoots up in alarm as he begins to stretch. She won’t have him ruin her rescue by dunking himself at the last minute. The grin he gives at her warning makes her realize it’s not sleep grogginess. This guy is drunk. Incredibly, a nap on a pool floaty has done nothing to speed his sobriety.

“Michelle,” he tells her, “get off the roof.”

“I’m not on the roof, you’re in the pool.”

He gives her a look like he doubts this very much and tilts to the side, trying to check out his surroundings. It sends a surge of worry through her, panic like when she almost fell in.

“Just… trust me. You’re in the pool.”

“Oh. You coming in? D’you wanna share this…”

Either he can’t recall the word ‘chair’ or he’s having trouble identifying the thing he’s lying on _as_ a chair. She kinda can’t blame him. It’s a weird place to wake up.

“No, I’m trying to get you out before you drown like a moron.”

“Aquaman can’t drown,” Peter protests.

Michelle groans.

“I didn’t say Aquaman, I said _a moron_.”

“S’not my favourite either, but I wouldn’ call him a moron,” he mumbles disgruntledly.

“Would you stop being so…!” She takes a breath. He’s smiling up at her again. “Come on, I’ll help you out.”

She tosses the skimmer away onto the lawn, steps onto the pool’s dry top step and crouches, extending her hands towards him.

“I’ll help _you_ out,” Peter counters.

It’s weirdly suggestive, the way he says it. Like a drunken doofus who stranded himself on a pool floaty has any possible power of seduction. Like he’d want to use it on _her_ if he did. Michelle’s pretty sure the Liz thing is mutual.

“Where’s my Ned? M’Ned. Ned. Ned?” he asks as they clasp hands (his are smooth and cool) and Peter eyes the wet stairs that he’s going to have to navigate since he seems to lack the necessary coordination to pull himself out onto the stones. If he picked one step higher, he wouldn’t dip the legs of his shorts in the water, but of course he does. Thankfully, he appears to find his footing (where are his shoes?), still sitting on the edge of the floaty as it squeals and tries to tip.

“Inside. Possibly defiling a couch with Betty.”

“S’not a bad idea,” Peter jokes with a sloppy grin as Michelle tugs him forward.

He slips on the wet step and she slips on too much momentum, but he’s somehow competent enough to steady her, their hands now squeezing each other. He’s close. His breath is warm and beery. What fifteen-year-old goes to a party and gets this drunk on _beer_? Gross. Michelle only holds his hands long enough to make sure he gets up the steps without falling back in. When she tries to let him go, Peter holds on.

“S’slippy,” he points out. He skates one foot out along the stones and leaves a slick trail of pool water.

“Fine. But only to the door.”

He beams to be allowed to hold her hand. She assumes he’s really afraid of slipping and cracking his head open. That’s… not unreasonable.

“Not with Betty,” he blurts right after making her pause. There’s a pine tree in the yard and Peter’s pulling a needle out of the soft arch of his foot.

“What?”

Michelle’s losing patience for this whole thing. It’s too much! He needs too much! She should’ve just gotten Ned. She can’t care for Peter like this, like a babysitter. Why didn’t she go home? She didn’t need this night of holding his hand and feeling his wet shorts touch her leg when he staggered too close.

“I don’ want Betty on the couch.”

“I hope you don’t want Betty at all. Because she’s into your best friend,” Michelle clarifies with a nervous swallow.

“Right.”

What the hell does he mean? Is she supposed to know?

“They looked pretty tame when I left,” she volunteers.

“Sometimes people do,” Peter replies with the cryptic wisdom reserved for the inebriated, and young children having a Wednesday Addams-type phase.

“Yeah, well.”

It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a couple blunt words meant to shut him up, neutralize any thoughtful implications of what he says. Michelle finally shakes off his hand and gives his back a gentle shove towards the door. She isn’t anticipating Peter to brace his arms against the frame, making her collide with his back because she expected him to keep moving. It’s really bad that she doesn’t back up immediately. Really bad. So bad. She can feel his heart beating through his back and her front, his science t-shirt and her striped one. What if she raised her hands to touch his back again, softer? What if she lowered her head until her forehead found the nape of his neck? Michelle’s lips part. In a few seconds, Peter opens the door and moves on like nothing happened.

Not totally though, because while she’s preoccupied with closing the door after them, he grabs her hand again. Michelle jolts, then notices his fingers are more than the welcoming cool she felt outside. They’re chilled. That stupid inflatable wasn’t a lot to have between his body and the water of the pool as the temperature finally started to drop after midnight.

“Michelle,” he says seriously, fingers wriggling as he holds her hand like he’s trying to figure out a way for his not to slide off. “I really―”

“You’re cold,” she says. “You’re too wobbly for me to have any confidence in letting you warm up by moving around. Maybe you should borrow a shower. They have one in the ground floor bathroom, isn’t that weird? I saw it before.”

Yes, Michelle’s rambling. Shower. Peter.

“You’re really great. I think you’re so… the best. Smart pretty.”

“Oh,” she replies. He probably means ‘pretty smart.’

Suddenly, his sort of dreamy expression changes.

“Might throw up before I shower.”

“Good call,” Michelle says, racing ahead of Peter’s stumbling steps to fling open the bathroom door. She closes it much more carefully to offer privacy while he pukes.

With a heavy exhalation, she sinks to the floor, back sliding down the wood door, bevelled detailing abusing her spine. She hears a flush, a splash of water, and maybe the rustle of clothing. Thinking about Peter dropping his clothes to the tiles makes her antsy and wary of being caught here. Not that she’s actually doing anything more than sitting alone on the ground a couple hours past the party’s peak. Idly, Michelle hopes he did get totally naked. Just because, if he entered the shower with some item of clothing still on, what was the point of so carefully extracting him from the pool? She’s not _worried_ , she just doesn’t want him to cancel out her considerable efforts. Her moderate efforts. It’s basically been no trouble. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have bothered. She thinks about Liz upstairs. Yep, why help Peter? There’s nothing in it for Michelle.

The water shuts off after a couple minutes. Peter makes a sound like he’s about to fall and Michelle bolts to her feet, hand hovering over the doorknob, before she hears him catch himself and sigh in relief. She lowers herself to the floor again, embarrassed by her reaction. He doesn’t need her here. He’ll probably be surprised if she’s hanging around when he comes out.

“Michelle?” Peter asks through the door. “You there?”

Her eyes widen and her body tenses. Should she jump up and run away? Hightail it to the living room and pretend she’s been there with Ned and Betty while he showered? If they’ve started making out again, they won’t even notice that she hasn’t been there the whole time. Peter taps feebly at the door. Or maybe he’s resting his head against it. She stays put.

“Yeah. What?”

“Thanks for helping me.”

He sounds about as pathetic as a Victorian orphan.

“I had nothing better to do,” Michelle assures him, tracing the grout between tiles with her fingertip.

“You coulda jus’ watched me. I know you do that. Watch me. Sometimes. I think you do.”

 _Shit_. She should’ve run. Her mouth opens and a squeaky groan comes out as she tries to compose a response.

“I didn’t know you were such a narcissist. Trust me, I have more important things to do with my time,” she says, still outlining tiles like they’re tiny tracks and her fingers are trains she could board to _escape this conversation_. “You must’ve imagined it.”

He opens the door so quietly―Liz’s parents must take care of their hinges―that Michelle flops backwards as Peter goes to step out and tumbles against his shins.

“I really like you,” he says as she cranes to stare up at him. His wet hair drips on her cheek.

Michelle just shakes her head and starts to scramble to her feet. Peter attempts to help her up by grabbing beneath her arms, nearly groping her boob in the process, though it’s clearly not intentional because when she turns, standing, she can tell he’s still not his soberest self.

“Wanna forget I said that,” Peter says.

She scrutinizes his flushed face and the slightly dazed look in his eyes. Was that a question? Is he requesting that she forget, for the sake of his own self-consciousness? Or is it a statement? He regrets saying it so much that he’s expressing, _to her face_ , that he wishes he hadn’t. Her gaze drops to his t-shirt. The neck’s getting wet as water continues to drain down from his hair. Has this boy ever heard of a towel? Michelle should _not_ have to look at him with his pink cheeks and his normally gelled hair loosened into hanging, wet curls along his forehead.

“You helped me,” he says, and wraps her in a hug.

Which she quickly wriggles out of. This is not the relationship, not the _friendship_ , they have. He’s drunk and he likes _Liz_ ―mature, responsible, gorgeous Liz―not her.

“You smell like beer,” Michelle informs him, so he won’t be offended by the way she rejected physical contact. Or maybe so he _will_ be offended. She doesn’t trust this. He’d probably be all cozy and grateful with any idiot who happened to haul him out of that pool. At least he doesn’t smell like barf.

“I didn’ even like it.”

His expression is scrunched and adorable in, like, a toddler kind of way. Whatever, he’s dumb and she doesn’t have a crush on him.

“You just, what, drank every bottle you found to make sure?”

Peter sighs dramatically and tilts sideways, clearly intending to lean against the bathroom’s doorframe and _clearly_ going to miss it because his spatial awareness is not the greatest right now. Michelle grabs his arms.

“Coffee,” she blurts. “Do you like coffee?”

“No,” Peter whines. “I jus’ like you.”

“You keep saying that,” Michelle mutters to herself, glancing away like Ned will appear and reclaim his best friend if she looks around for him enough times. She takes Peter’s hand again (he smiles like he’s happy to give it) and leads him to the kitchen.

“What are we doing?”

“Um,” she says, pulling open cupboards, “making you coffee.”

“Ok.”

“Ok? A minute ago you said you don’t like it. I was kinda expecting a tantrum.”

“S’gross,” he states as he rests against the counter next to her. “But I like being with you. I like _you_.”

Michelle laughs weakly.

“Sure you do,” she says.

“Yeah and this is gonna take forever.”

“Why would it take forever?” she asks, digging into a drawer.

“Liz’s parents don’ drink coffee.”

She straightens up and stares at Peter, who slides closer, grinning innocently.

“How do you know that?”

He frowns in hazy thought.

“She was drinking it one time and said her parents wouldnapprove. Wouldnapprove,” he repeats, struggling to separate his words. He gives up. “They wouldn’ like it.”

“Right. So. There’s no coffee in this house?”

“Don’ think so.”

“If you wanted to spend time with me, you wouldn’t have told me that,” Michelle points out. “Now I don’t have to search this kitchen.”

“Why were you?”

“For coffee, dumbass.”

“Why?”

“To… clear your head. Make you stop acting weird.” She blushes and turns away from him. What’s her next move? Drag him to Ned and finally leave this house and its lingering party guests?

“Because I was in the pool,” Peter says gravely.

Michelle turns back.

“No, not because you were in the pool. Because of… because you said… Other reasons.”

Annoyingly, he just smiles at her.

“I’m nice,” he tells her.

She snorts.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m nice. Lemme be nice to you.”

“Well, it was already _super_ nice listening to you vomit, so I think I’m good. I’ll go find Ned and he can take it from here.”

She’s two steps away when Peter speaks.

“I thought I liked Liz.” Michelle flinches. “She’s really great, but I feel different about you.”

She wants to flip him off or tell him to shut up―simple methods she’s used to push him away at school, but between the vulnerability in his voice and the fact that he’s still tipsy, she’s scared that being too harsh could make him burst into tears.

“You’re just… you think I saved you. You’ve got some kind of drunk hero-worship thing going on,” she diagnoses, not turning around.

“I thought I would be able to talk to you,” he says quietly. “I saw you over and over all night and I was never really, never _ready_ ,” he corrects, “to talk to you, so I kept getting another beer.”

“You’re an idiot,” she says gently.

“Don’ remember why I went in the pool.”

“You’re just dramatic like that.”

“Maybe,” Peter sighs. “Am I still drunk?”

“Yeah, dude.”

“I’ve been drunk forever.”

“That’s why I was getting you coffee,” Michelle reminds him, turning back.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Coffee. I should… tell Ned.”

This plan is vague and it’s possible that he’ll abandon it, but she can’t abandon _him_ because Peter pushes off the counter and grabs her hand as he barrels out of the kitchen. The plan holds long enough for them to find Ned (and Betty) asleep on the living room couch. Michelle assess them and decides they look minorly dishevelled―enough that they probably made out again, but not enough that anything more than that went down. Betty’s hairband is askew where she laid her head on Ned’s chest.

“He’s asleep,” Peter says, too loud. Michelle shushes him and pulls him away. “Now what?” he asks in a noisy whisper.

“Well, you should probably stay with―”

“You. I’ll be better after coffee,” he promises. “Way better.”

“Better at what? At remembering you don’t actually like me?”

“I like you.”

“You’re confused.”

“ _You’re_ confused.”

“Great comeback,” she says flatly.

“Let’s see. After coffee. I’ll still like you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Parker,” Michelle says because she’s scared of his insistence. He’s making it harder and harder to brush off as some stupid thing he said to her when he was drunk with every reiteration.

“If we don’ get coffee, you’ll never know if you were right. Don’ you wanna know if you were right?” he baits.

She glares at him. He beams.

“Look,” Peter continues, yanking something from his pocket, “I didn’ drop my wallet in the pool!”

“Congratulations.”

“I can pay for coffee!”

“You’re not paying,” she says with a firmness that startles them both. “Because, because you’re under the influence and shouldn’t be making financial decisions.”

“A coffee decision isn’ a financial decision,” he argues.

“Of course it is. So, I’ll pay.”

“We’re going? Yes!”

“ _Shhh_!”

Michelle rolls her eyes and frees her hand from Peter’s to let him follow her to the front door on his own two feet. There are his shoes, at last, kicked off to the side. She waits while he stomps his feet into them, then blinks in the darkness as they step out into the early morning. It has to be coming up on four o’clock.

“There’s probably a twenty-four-hour place nearby,” she says, nervous as they set out.

“’K.”

“You’re too trusting. What if I was kidnapping you?”

“I could get away,” Peter brags. “You don’ even have that thing.”

“What thing?”

He mimes for her.

“The skimmer,” she interprets. “Right. Every would-be kidnapper’s weapon of choice.”

Peter’s holding her hand again by the time they reach the end of the street. Michelle doesn’t know how it happened.

“Why’d you help me?” he asks while she looks left and right, considering the likeliest direction for the cup of coffee that’ll assist Peter in his return to sobriety so they can clear this whole thing up. Back to the reality of her one-sided crush. “I forget.”

She makes her decision.

“Because,” she tells him. “There was nothing good on TV.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued because, one, I am ~~weak~~ open to requests and, two, because I received another prompt that I thought I could twist a little to make it appropriate for this chapter.
> 
> This fic's prompt (from Tumblr): 43. Taking care of the other when sick or injured

Michelle flips off the overhead florescent light as she leaves the coffee shop’s one-person bathroom. She likes the heavy _clonk_ of the plastic switch, the jangle of the doorknob as she turns it. Loud, real sounds; they prove this is actually happening―predawn breakfast with her liar of a crush who held her hand all the way here and tried to reaffirm his affections every five minutes. She steps out of the bathroom, blinking against the shine of a floor that probably hasn’t seen much traffic since the night before. Out here, it smells like cinnamon sugar and coffee. The reason they’re here.

At the booth they picked before she excused herself, she sees Peter doing his best to look absolutely sober under the suspicious eye of the woman behind the counter. It only makes his half-drunk self seem even more intoxicated. His hair’s still damp from the shower at Liz’s and there’s a looseness to his neck as he keeps his head propped up with a fist under his cheek. Michelle catches herself smiling fondly and wipes the expression from her face before sliding in across from him.

“You know what you want?” she asks breezily, gaze drifting sideways to avoid looking at Peter’s face too long. She pretends to read the list of milkshake flavours on the little brown-and-turquoise (highly questionable colour scheme and the whole shop reflects it) tent card. The faint scent of chlorine crawls up her nose. The wet legs of his shorts.

Michelle chances a look at the boy opposite and he’s staring at her with hopeful eyes. Her questioning eyebrows fall. No, no, she doesn’t want an answer to her question if he interpreted it the way the dreamy smile he’s sporting suggests.

“Michelle,” he starts, tipsy gaze wavering around her face like a kite he’s trying to keep aloft, “you and me―”

“I’ll go order,” she says. She slaps her palms against the table’s surface to push herself up and back out of the booth.

Peter sighs dramatically behind her and she ignores him, presenting a hesitant smile to the employee as she approaches the counter. Rows of donuts on the rack behind the woman draw Michelle’s eye with their glistening glazes and candy-coloured sprinkles. The rows of each variety are full. They look just-made.

“Is he doing ok?” the woman asks, pointing in Peter’s direction.

“Uh…” _Let me have this_ , Michelle thinks. _Let me have one minute of ordering and staring at fresh donuts without having to think about him sitting over there waiting for me_. But she’s not going to get that.

“You think he’ll be sick? I don’t want him being sick in here.”

Fair.

“No, he’s, um, he’s already done that. He just needs some coffee. And maybe a…” She lifts her eyes to the menu displayed overhead. “…breakfast bagel? The turkey bacon one?”

The woman shrugs and begins punching their order into the register. This can’t be her first rodeo, if rodeos are inebriated teenagers who straggle in at all hours for caffeine and something greasy between house parties and home.

“Anything for you?”

“A coke float and a strawberry donut, please,” Michelle requests.

She doesn’t usually eat this much sugar at once unless it’s her birthday and her dad brings home personalized cupcakes―it’ll probably make her teeth ache. She’s pushing herself forward, making this a treat instead of a trial as she works through the early hours of the morning with a confused Peter Parker. When the weight of what he’s been telling her he feels for her turns out to be nothing, as easy to dismiss and brush away as dust on glass, Michelle will have her float and her donut as the joys she can fall back on. A sugar high as medicine to counteract the heartache when he remembers it’s Liz he likes, not her.

Michelle pays and the employee bags her donut and pours Peter’s coffee into a mug stamped with the name of the shop. Somebody in the narrow aisle of kitchen in the back has started assembling the breakfast bagel, so she takes the coffee and donut over to their booth, deciding to make two trips. When she sets the paper bag on the table, Peter pokes it open with a finger to peer inside at the glowing pink icing.

“Wow! Is this―”

“Nope,” she says, swiftly sliding the bag away from him. “That’s mine. Your food’s coming.”

Peter turns a pouting face on her and she rolls her eyes.

“No,” she repeats. “Don’t touch.”

“ _Fine_.” He rests his face against his fist again. Tipsy doofus. “I still like you though,” he says the second she turns away. “Even if you won’t buy me a donut.”

Michelle makes herself walk back to the counter, where Peter’s bagel, wrapped in paper, is waiting next to a stack of napkins and a tall, cold glass of coke. A generous lump of vanilla ice cream bobs on top and she thanks the woman behind the counter again.

If Peter was wounded by the sight of the donut, he’s beside himself when she also claims the float as hers.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” he groans. “That’s just mean.”

“Drink your coffee,” she instructs.

She’s not sure if Peter’s kind face is capable of glowering, but his eyebrows communicate severe disappointment above the edge of the large mug as he takes a big swallow. And almost chokes.

“Ugh!” he says.

Smugly, Michelle taps her straw on the table and works the paper casing off before sinking the straw into her float. She reaches to where the condiments are crowded against the wall and slides Peter the little box jammed with neatly-aligned sugar packets. As he tears open one, then three, she sucks a swirl of pop and ice cream through her straw, watching him.

 _Still like me?_ she wants to taunt as he visibly winces to brace himself for the next sip of coffee. But he swallows and his disgusted expression fades. When it comes to sugar and making something palatable, sometimes more is more, Michelle reasons, wiggling her donut free of its bag. It’s a tight maneuver, but she manages not to smear any of the florid icing off on the inside of the bag. Just on her thumb. She sucks it into her mouth, then glances over at Peter. He’s staring at her and she drops her eyes, wiping her hand on a napkin.

“How’s it taste now?” she asks, nodding to indicate the discarded sugar packets.

“Like last night was a mistake.”

“Oh.”

“The drinking part,” Peter clarifies quickly. “That was… really dumb.”

“Well, you have your moments.”

“Nobody saw me, right?”

Michelle is immediately very absorbed in pushing her straw through the ice cream in her float. She makes a well. She draws indents above and below, turning the well into a round nose centered between eyes and a smile.

“No,” she agrees, observing the way her coke clouds with streams of melting ice cream. “Nobody saw you with me.”

“Michelle, tha’s not wha’ I mean.”

The low, rushed earnestness of Peter’s tone revives his drunken slur.

“I think Liz might’ve been upstairs,” Michelle continues, not looking at him, “so she definitely missed your whole escapade in the pool. You don’t have to be embarrassed to show your face there again or anything.”

“I don’t have any plans to go back,” he says. His voice is slow and steady now, like he’s really trying to control it to get his point across. “Unless you’re gonna be there.”

She shakes her head automatically, disbelieving his assertion.

“You don’t have to do… whatever you’re doing,” she says.

“I’m not doing anything.”

Peter tries to unwrap his bagel with care, but the paper tears and the cheese sandwiched between the hot eggs and turkey bacon sticks to the wrapper, stretching into a rubbery orange string as he pulls the bagel higher and higher in an attempt to free it. Michelle blinks at this hopeless case.

“Your arms are too short,” she informs him.

He makes to climb up on his seat, presumably planning to stretch the bagel to the ceiling if he has to, but Michelle darts out a hand to grab hold of Peter’s science-y t-shirt as he starts to stand.

“Just… behave, would you? The lady over there already has you on barf watch.”

“I’m not gonna throw up again,” he promises, sheepish, as he sits back. Good, they’re electing to ignore her instinct to get a firm grip on his clothing. She drew her hand back quickly and she’s grateful that Peter’s apparently not making a thing of it.

“That’s what I told her, but you still need to, you know, act relatively normal.”

“When am I not relatively normal?”

 _All the time_ , Michelle thinks, sneaking looks at him as she picks up her donut and tries to determine the nicest spot to take her first bite from. _You’re not normal, Peter. You’re special. That’s why I like you so much_.

“Pool float,” she says instead with a _got you there_ tip of her head.

She takes a delicious bite of fluffy donut slathered in icing. The sweet taste of artificial strawberry never disappoints. Peter’s like a mopey dog; she can feel his eyes tracking the donut to her mouth, like he’s wondering when he’ll get his bite. The thought of him biting where she just bit―his tongue coming into contact with the airy, crumpled edge of donut she tore through with her teeth―makes Michelle’s cheeks heat and the tingle of sugar all the stronger as she chews.

Finally severing the cheese trail with his fingers, Peter winds the excess around his bagel and takes a bite.

“Wha’?” he mumbles with his mouth full.

Oh _shit_. She smiled as he wrangled his breakfast and didn’t catch herself. Well, it’s too late now. Michelle outright _laughs_. It sets Peter going too and he slaps a napkin in front of his mouth so he doesn’t spray scrambled egg across the table while he strives to chew through his laughter. She laughs so hard that she rocks forward and has to hold her donut out of the way, avoiding getting icing in her hair. He does eventually manage to swallow, wipe his mouth, and put the napkin down to take an easy drink of his coffee. Michelle wipes tears from her eyes with her finger, laugh dying down to the occasional giggle. Her stomach hurts from this.

“Like a champ,” she comments, exhaling the end of her hilarity, when Peter replaces his mug on the table without making any sort of face.

“Coffee’s really not that bad,” he tells her. “Maybe I’ll start drinking it all the time.”

They hold each other’s eye for a moment, then burst into renewed laughter. Who knows what the woman behind the counter thinks of them by now. Michelle’s face is sore from the breadth of her smile and she can feel that her eyes are soft as she looks across the table at Peter.

“I really like you, Michelle,” he sighs out on the end of a laugh.

Her smile contracts and she fidgets, looking down at the donut in her hand. She takes a bite to buy time.

“I told you,” Peter persists. “I said I’d still feel the same about you after coffee.”

“You’ve had less than a cup,” she argues without looking up.

“The amount of coffee I had to consume wasn’t speci… _specified_.” It’s a tricky word while he’s in the process of sobering up, but his tongue figures it out. “Michelle.”

She looks where he wants her to look―right into his eyes―and takes another bite, deliberately aggressive, so he knows she’s making her mouth too busy to reply on purpose. He chuckles.

“Do you know how terrifying it is to say this so many times?”

“So stop.”

“I’ll stop if you believe me,” he counters.

“You like Liz,” she reminds him, brushing him off as she glances away. To switch things up from her donut, she drinks coke so cold it hurts her teeth in a whole new way, making her grimace.

“I had a crush on her, yeah, but, I don’t know, I guess you’re not as observant as you think you are if you didn’t realize I’ve been into you for a while.” Peter laughs again, briefly. “I’ve been trying to find ways to hang out with you all summer.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” he insists, “I have. Usually, Ned and I just hang out and sleep over at each other’s homes and go to the movies and stuff. We don’t go to parties.”

“Nerds,” she says, lips loose around her straw.

“ _Exactly_! We’ve done so much group stuff the last few weeks that him and Betty are together! Only repeated, prolonged contact could make those opposites attract.”

“Tonight,” Michelle begins, “we were at Liz’s…”

“’Cause I was hoping you’d show up. And I’m not at Liz’s now,” Peter says firmly, then stops to take a breath. “I’m right here with you. And it’s kinda perfect. I honestly can’t figure out how _you_ ended up asking _me_ out.”

“I didn’t ask you out,” she says quickly. “This is to help you.”

“Because you care about me.”

“Because you were being an idiot, trying to tell me you like me when you were drunk off your ass. Seriously, I could’ve filmed it and had some serious leverage if I ever needed a favour.”

He ignores the empty threat.

“You did it because you like me too. You like me too?” Peter asks, brightening as he hears his own deduction spoken aloud.

“I like that you haven’t puked and turned me into a liar for the coffee shop lady,” Michelle says in a panic.

“Admit you like me.” His smile’s only a little bit goofy from his earlier beers as he downs some more of his bagel.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I… this is not supposed to be an interrogation,” she says. He touches his hair absentmindedly, flipping the totally dried (curly!) hair aside to expose the strands still dark with water, and her heart does a silly shimmy in her chest.

“If you’re really not gonna say it, just know that you’re leaving me alone in this.”

“What?”

“In being the idiot who told someone he liked them and didn’t hear it back.”

“Oh please,” Michelle scoffs, “if you make this into some kind of friend-zone bullshit―”

“I’m not. I just think it’s dumb that you won’t say it back.”

As though his continued declarations of affection have caught up with him, Peter’s face burns red.

“You like Liz,” she says quietly. He just looks at her.

“Michelle.” Peter matches her volume. A shy smile tugs at the corner of his mouth like he had it tucked there for safekeeping until the right moment. “I’m really, really sure I like _you_.”

Slowly, she begins to smile.

“Ok.”

At that, he holds his hand out to her, the back resting on the tabletop. Michelle puts her palm against his. There’s nothing magic in this all-night coffee joint but the mindboggling shade of pink they get their strawberry icing and the sensation that shoots up her neck―more intense than a tickle, gentler than a power surge―when she and Peter fold their hands experimentally around each other’s. She realizes she’s staring at them, his fingers curled around the side of her hand, and flicks her gaze up. In time to witness Peter’s teeth sinking into her donut.

“I’ll buy you another one?” he offers, chewing.

“I can’t believe you.”

“Two? I’ll buy two?”

“Give me a bite of your bagel,” she negotiates.

Peter returns her donut and offers the bagel. Rather than let him pass it to her, she tightens her grip on his hand and raises up from her seat enough to take a bite while he holds it.

“Still warm,” Michelle notes after swallowing.

“Uh… uh, yeah.”

“You’re staring.”

“It’s my, uh, hangover.”

“I should’ve known you were telling the truth about liking me,” she teases, even though acknowledging it has her blushing. “Watching you try to lie is pretty painful.”

“No, really, I’m… so ill,” he lies again. He slumps a little for effect, though his grasp on her hand stays solid.

Michelle gives him a look, but she also takes a couple of napkins and presses them to the side of her float glass to wet them in the cold condensation.

“Here,” she says, handing the makeshift compress over. He takes it with a grin and sticks it to his forehead.

“Much better.”

“Uh huh.”

“You cured me.”

“Eat your bagel.”

They disengage their hands when he nears the end and needs all possible fingers clamping the bagel shut so scrambled eggs don’t spill out. The damp napkin makes a tiny white heap like a scale model of a snow-capped mountain where it unstuck from Peter’s face and landed on the table. He’s pretty cute, really, with his hair un-gelled and his subtly chlorine-infused shorts and the fact that he’s spending his morning here with her. Peter drains the end of the coffee and she feels a flush rise from her chest as she watches him tip his head back, showing his throat and the jump of his Adam’s apple. He holds the mug out to her, displaying its emptiness.

“I like you,” he reiterates emphatically.

“I like you too.”

“Can I have a sip of your coke?”

“After that betrayal with my donut? What do _you_ think?”

While he tidies up their table, Michelle returns his mug to the counter and has the employee dump the rest of her float into a takeout cup with a lid. She reinserts her straw and turns.

“Ready to go?” he asks. She nods.

Peter skips ahead a step to get the door for her on their way out.

They hold hands and automatically head in the direction of Liz’s house. He has to collect Ned, she just likes walking with him. The early morning is cool and Michelle tries to appreciate it; the humidity will climb with the sun. Before they get back―way, way before they get there―she pulls Peter to a stop on the sidewalk and waggles her drink.

“Oh, well, if you’re sure,” he jokes. She rolls her eyes to seem like she’s fed up with these dorky antics. And also to miss the sight of him feeling for the straw with his tongue because he’s still looking at her face.

They take a few more steps and, from the corner of her eye, she sees him lower the cup. Michelle stops Peter a second time. When she kisses him, his mouth is an experience―shockingly cold and creamy. It’s the closest she ever plans to come to licking a frozen pole in winter. Luckily, as he kisses her back, smiling hard against her lips, it doesn’t take long to warm him up.


End file.
